In the Documents: Emails Between Pennsylvania’s Butler County Commissioners and Prominent Election Denial Group

American Oversight obtained communications that county commissioners in Pennsylvania’s Butler County had with “election integrity” groups, including one organization that has leaned on false claims of widespread fraud to push for vote recounts throughout the state.

The group, Audit the Vote PA, also supported prominent election denier Doug Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign last year, and has pushed for counties to launch ballot recounts of recent elections.

Localities in Pennsylvania, as in other parts of the country, have witnessed a surge in activism centered on unfounded, conspiracy theory-driven concerns about election integrity. Claims of widespread voter fraud and unreliable voting systems have infected local governments and have been used to justify wasteful investigations and delays in proper election administration. In just the past few months, Luzerne County failed to certify its midterm election results by the deadline, and Lycoming and York counties launched hand recounts of 2020 and 2022 election ballots following organized pushes from groups like Audit the Vote PA. 

In August 2022, the Butler County Board of Commissioners authorized a hand recount of 2020 election ballots in two precincts, with plans to recount a third precinct’s 2022 midterm results in November, though it has not been reported whether that took place. The Pennsylvania Department of State criticized the August recount as “continued efforts to question the results and ultimately the will of Pennsylvania voters” that “contribute to sowing distrust in our system.” 

American Oversight submitted Right-to-Know requests to Butler County seeking information about the motivations behind the recount and the potential involvement of outside organizations. The communications we obtained provide snapshots of voter-fraud alarmists’ sustained efforts to work with sympathetic local government officials to further the election denial movement, and also illustrate how Butler County’s two Republican commissioners appear to have spearheaded their own efforts without needing persuasion by activists. 

Communications with Audit the Vote PA

Election deniers have increasingly pushed for hand-counting ballots, but experts warn that the process is slower, more expensive, and more prone to error than using machines. Public reporting has indicated that Audit the Vote PA was behind the push for November’s three-precinct recount of midterm results in York County and the January recount in Lycoming County of ballots from the 2020 election. The records uncovered by American Oversight point to last summer’s hand tally in Butler County as having potentially inspired Audit the Vote’s push for those other recounts.

On Aug. 17, 2022, the day Butler County elections staff finished its hand recount, Audit the Vote PA’s CEO, Toni Shuppe, sent county commissioners throughout Pennsylvania a report titled “County Based Recommendations for Election Integrity.” Shuppe told recipients that Audit the Vote PA could work with them to “help implement” the organization’s recommendations, which included banning ballot drop boxes, addressing supposed problems with voting machines, and establishing automatic recounts by performing a “hand recount of 3+ precincts each election cycle.” 

Butler County Commissioner Leslie Osche thanked Shuppe for the report and for including in the recommendations “many of the items we are trying to address here in Butler County.” She wrote, “Obviously you perhaps adopted our recommendation on the audit/hand count of three or more precincts.”

In response, Shuppe encouraged “sticking the tabulating machines on the shelf” in favor of hand counts, adding “we would be willing to help you figure out what that process could look like.” 

Osche replied two weeks later that she was “assessing what it would take to get to a hand count,” but that there wasn’t enough time to implement it by November. She asked Shuppe if she were “aware that it is legal to be registered in more than one state, but illegal to vote in more than one state?” She added that she didn’t “trust the concept behind” the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit that about 30 states use to maintain voter registration data. ERIC has been the target of conservative conspiracy theories that accuse it of being a left-wing organization, leading some state leaders to threaten to leave the consortium — including the newly elected Alabama secretary of state, who withdrew from ERIC last month. 

Shuppe offered to share with Osche “the raw results” from the group’s canvassing in Butler County, and asked if Osche would like to speak with her and a “data expert.” She also noted that “your office is inundated with requests for the [cast vote records] since Mike Lindell’s Truth Summit,” referring to the annual event hosted by the Trump-allied election denier and MyPillow CEO. Following last summer’s summit, local election offices were bombarded with requests for voting records after Lindell encouraged attendees to seek out information on every ballot cast in their counties. Shuppe suggested that announcing a “full hand recount” of “3 random races” after the November midterms could slow the wave of requests. 

Osche declined, writing, “I will not make a ‘deal’ in exchange for [the requests’] withdrawal,” but that she would consider an audit of precincts “because [it’s] the right thing to do.”

Shuppe wrote in response, “I appreciate what Butler County has done thus far, but it’s still not enough,” and further attempted to persuade Osche to use hand counts to verify the results from voting machines. (Lycoming County, which followed in the footsteps of Butler and conducted a recount in January, saw negligible differences in vote counts between hand counting and the machine tallies from two years ago.)

The records reveal that in early September, Osche asked her assistant to schedule a meeting with Shuppe and to “please include Commissioner [Kimberly] Geyer,” the county’s other Republican commissioner. There was no mention of Kevin Boozel, the only Democrat on the commission, in the email thread. It is not clear from the records whether this meeting took place.

Communications with Butler PA Patriots

American Oversight also obtained communications with a conservative group called the Butler PA Patriots. Last summer, Zachary Scherer, the group’s leader, repeatedly emailed Butler County commissioners with suggestions and information, including photos of presentation slides from Lindell’s Moment of Truth summit and an invitation to a screening of the conspiracy movie “2000 Mules.”

On June 13, 2022, Commissioner Geyer replied to an email from Scherer titled “Election Integrity Declaration.” She wrote, “Commissioner Osche and myself are for election integrity and working in our respective capacities at the state and local levels to restore the system and repeal Act 77,” referring to the state’s mail-in voting law. “However, until there is a Republican Governor in place here in Pennsylvania, there will be no restoration to the original election process.”

Scherer asked for examples of what efforts the commissioners were taking, to which Geyer replied, “I have multiple examples, because we are doing everything we can to reverse this unconstitutional System. I will be happy to share with you at the appropriate time.”

Communications with Envoy Sage

Additional records that American Oversight obtained include communications from Envoy Sage, the consulting firm hired in the fall of 2021 by Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate to conduct a “forensic investigation” of the state’s 2020 election results. 

On March 30, 2022, the day before Osche and other Pennsylvania county election officials testified at a hearing on ballot drop boxes, Michael Maull, the director of operations for Envoy Sage, sent an email to Osche and others, writing, “On behalf of Senator [Cris] Dush please accept our gratitude for your willingness to come before the committee on such short notice.” 

In early 2022, Envoy Sage was also preparing to conduct an inspection of Fulton County voting machines, a review that was later placed on indefinite hold. Fulton County was also the site of a ballot review that took place in late 2020 and early 2021. As part of an ongoing investigation into that earlier review, American Oversight recently asked Wake TSI, the firm that conducted it, to preserve any and all related records.

More than two years on from the 2020 election, right-wing groups have continued their zealous attempts to convince state and local government officials to conduct sham election investigations and pursue policies that undermine faith in democracy under the guise of “election integrity.” American Oversight has filed additional records requests to other counties in Pennsylvania, including Lycoming, Luzerne, and York. Learn more about American Oversight’s work to shed light on the activity of the election denial network in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona.